[ad_1]
Immigration was very different before 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Liability Act (IIRIRA). The law was supposed to stop undocumented immigration by increasing enforcement and punishing people who were in the United States without papers. Instead, he did the opposite.
Prior to 1996, Mexican immigrants who arrived illegally in the United States had an approximately 50 percent chance of returning to Mexico within a year. But in the years that followed, more and more people began to stay in the United States, according to data from the Mexican Migration Project. There were approximately 5 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States before IIRIRA. Today it is at least double.
Laws like IIRIRA have shaped the way the United States focuses on enforcing immigration as a deterrent. But in reality, it has proven that tighter enforcement doesn’t actually stop undocumented immigration.
Check out Dara Lind’s former Vox reporting on the law and Nicole Narea’s story on the false promises of immigration law enforcement.
You can find this video and all Vox videos on Youtube.
[ad_2]
Source link